Islands warn of extinction at UN climate week

Abandonded dwellings stand surrounded by flood waters amid continuing rains in 2008 near Gonaives, Haiti

WASHINGTON — As world leaders gather for key climate talks here, small island nations Monday warned they were running out of time with rising seas threatening to wipe them off the map.

Spread across the Earth's oceans, the planet's tiniest members grouped as part of the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) are hoping to make their voices heard 100 days before UN-hosted climate talks in Copenhagen.

Climate negotiators have spent the last two years working toward a make-or-break summit in Copenhagen this December, expected to ink new targets for global emissions beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

AOSIS has dubbed itself the "moral voice of the negotiations" while the European Union prides itself on taking the lead, with member states agreeing to make 20 percent cuts in CO2 emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels.

EU leaders have said they are ready to commit to 30 percent cuts if the rest of the world does likewise to attain the overall goal of restricting global warming to two degrees Celsius.

But such a cut in rising temperatures is still too warm for many low-lying and island nations.

"Small island countries need to say that it is tantamount to declaring their extinction, because the consequences of going to a two degree Celsius increase are such that whole nations are to disappear," UN climate negotiator Yvo de Boer told AFP. CONTINUE